Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The army marched south from Zundak. Great clouds of dust were kicked up as the army began to move, obscuring the view behind them. A train of carts, camels, and camp followers three times the length of the army itself followed. As they rode south down out of the hills around Zundak the view opened up before them. Fields of indigo flowers carpeted the valley from the Shan in the east to the Korum in the west. The Bloody 13th led the army down from Zundak. The last time Dryden had made this ride, there had been a different feel to it, though this ride still felt urgent. Before, they had ridden hard to bring news of invasion to Blackwater and Belfair. Now, their role was reversed, they were the invading army. Haddock had honoured him by giving the vanguard to the 13th Dragoons. This was their revenge and he was a symbol of that retribution to the whole host of soldiers that followed. All had heard now, from his troopers, of his battle with the demon at Dau. Rumours and hushed whispers seemed to follow him through the army now. He rode on Rosie beside Havelock with Mar and Captain Khathan just behind them. They rode along the river that flowed lazily through the valley during the summer. A light hot breeze blew down through the valley, making the trees along the river dance in the light. The first village on the route was found to be empty, all the people had fled long before their approach.

  “Burn it,” Havelock had ordered as they rode through. Sergeant Steel had led a group of troopers to light fires. There was no one to kill and nothing of value to plunder, so they rode on.

  The first evening they sat dining in the officer’s mess tent. The table was set splendidly. A huge roast dominated the table, the huge carcass of a deer that Haddock himself had hunted while the army marched. Servants served flutes of bubbly white wine.

  Haddock stood to offer a toast, “We will arrive at Inshulla upon the ‘morrow,” we will raze it to the ground. The commander spoke of one of the forts that were strung through the valley of Vurun, of which Zundak was the most northerly. It was not a large fort, but scouts had reported that it was manned, and it could not be left at their rear. The general continued, “Colonel East, will reduce its walls in short order, I’m sure, but gentlemen, as you well know, this is the most fertile part of the valley. While we reduce this fort, we must do what we can to ensure the aethium does not fall into the wrong hands, into Fyrin hands. So, I say to you all, burn the valley.”

  “Burn the valley, sir?” Colonel Shelton asked.

  “Indeed, Colonel, burn it all,” The general smiled, then, and a chill went down Dryden’s spine.

  “Havelock, I want you and the 13th to lead the way. There are villages up on the far slopes of the eastern valley. I give you that task.”

  “Sir, what of the people?” Havelock asked.

  “What of them?” Haddock asked in return.

  “Are we to kill the civilians?”

  Haddock turned his attention to Dryden, he misliked the gaze of the General on him at this moment, “Let me ask you, Dryden. Did the roonies spare our own colonists or the wives and children of our soldiers when they took the column at Golconda?”

  “No,” Dryden whispered.

  “What was that, Dryden? You’ll have to speak louder, I’m hard of hearing these days. I stood next to too much cannon fire in my youth,” Haddock grinned darkly at him.

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  He spoke louder, though it felt against his will, he did not want to answer, the thought of killing civilians sickened him, “Sir, no they did not. They killed many, and took the rest into captivity.”

  “What did I promise you in Andaban?” The general asked.

  “Vengeance,” Dryden answered.

  “That I did. We cannot bring back the dead,” Haddock replied, “But there will be a reckoning. Burn the crops, burn the villages, spare none. It will be as the wars of old. You have heard the saying, ‘an eye for an eye’, we will take ten of theirs for each of ours that was taken. Let all see this act of retribution, let it be their reminder to our colonies, that Vastrum will brook no sedition, no mutiny. The cost of revolution is to be made a land fit only for vultures and dogs. They will see this, and none will rise against us again.”

  “Huzzah!” Someone shouted. Soon everyone was standing and shouting Huzzah. Dryden stayed seated, but raised his glass and drank all the same. He took the wine in one swig, a servant refilled it, and he downed that one too.

  The next day they arrived at Inshulla. Colonel East and his artillery set up on a hill overlooking the fort and began firing down at it. A core of infantry was set to secure and blockade the fort and the road. The rest of the army was sent out to burn the country around the fort. The faces of the 13th were grim as they rode out towards the eastern hills of Vurun that lay up against the Shan Mountains. There was no resistance as they rode. They found abandoned villages which they burned. They took torches to the fields they passed. Dryden turned and looked back more than once. Smoke billowed all across the northern valley now. The valley was not wide in the north, and the 13th arrived at the villages they had been sent to burn near noon. These villages were not empty. Captain Khathan was sent to the most northerly of them, Captain Benton to the middle, and Adams to the south. Havelock went with Khathan, Mar went with Benton, and Dryden went with Adams. Adams was a man with an easy smile, beloved by many in the 13th.

  They stopped at a spot which overlooked the village. The 80 men of 1st squadron held back below the crest of the hill and Dryden, Captain Adams, and a Lieutenant named Longview together went and looked out from a cluster of boulders to make sure they were not riding into a trap. Dryden looked through a spyglass. He saw nothing, then he handed the lens to Adams who looked as well.

  “I see nothing but quaint little village,” Adams remarked.

  He was not wrong. The village consisted of a few dozen houses built around a small central plaza with a well in the middle. Small subsistence farms growing vegetables, and small orchards lay around the main middle of the village. Some women and children worked in the village. Men could be seen harvesting aethium flowers in the fields further from the village. They had not evacuated to hide in the hills. Perhaps they thought themselves far enough from the army to escape, or perhaps they did not know of the army at all. It did not smell like a trap to him.

  “Lieutenant Longview, go prepare the men,” Dryden ordered quietly.

  “I have a reservation about this, Major” Captain Adams said softly enough that only Dryden could hear him.

  Dryden considered the Captain’s words. He agreed with them. He had more than a few reservations about this himself. This was what he had feared when he had uttered his promise of revenge. These people did not deserve the suffering that would be upon them. He knew their orders, they all knew their orders. Some among the picked men of Haddock’s army were bloodthirsty men. Many of the sepoys in this army had been taken from Gulud, Dravan, and the other colonies that had lost soldiers to the slaughter of the Vuruni rebellion. They would have little compunction about slaughtering Vuruni in return. He could not voice his concerns to Adams, however, no matter how much he shared them. Adams was merely voicing the reasonable concerns of a gentleman and an officer. If Dryden returned those concerns, however, it would be undermining the orders of his superior officer -- it would be mutiny.

  “Noted, Captain, now go down there and burn that village. Send Lieutenant Mallick’s platoon over to ride down the men working in the fields and burn the aethium,” Dryden could scarcely believe he was giving the order. He gave the order with a furrowed brow. More even than the killing itself, it was the inevitability of it that he hated most of all. This was what the god beneath their feet wanted, what the land itself wanted, what he had promised, what he was swept towards. He felt in his heart that it was his own wickedness that did not deny the world its wanton bloodlust. He hated himself in that moment as they rode down the hill, and went to the bloody work that gods and generals demanded of him. The words he had thought once before came to him again, damn them, damn them all.